The Sediments of Time

by Meave Leakey

  The complex mixture of features in the skeleton of the Hobbit can’t be explained by pathological conditions and, incredible as it might seem, are most consistent with a process of island dwarfism among an isolate Homo erectus population. The recent discovery of hominin fossils of a similar small size at the 700,000-year-old Mata Menge site have given us a potential timeline for the evolution of Homo floresiensis.

  It is mind-boggling to think that more than 140,000 years after H. sapiens evolved, an island dwarf that derived from an H. erectus ancestor still persisted in an isolated pocket. Until only relatively recently, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the elusive Denisovans, and H. floresiensis were all sharing the planet, a remarkable diversity at a relatively late stage of our evolution. The Hobbit and the pygmy stegodon both apparently became extinct after a volcanic eruption on Flores rendered it uninhabitable for a while. But in the plethora of islands that make up the Indonesian archipelago, Flores is not alone for its legends of the “little people” who live in the forests. Might there be still more island dwarfs hiding in the remote forests or only recently becoming extinct? It is an alluring idea.

  17

  A Very Good Hominin

  In 1971, at the sharp crack of a gunshot and the sensation of a bullet whizzing past his ear, Bernard Ngeneo dove beneath the dubious protection of a small wait-a-bit thornbush. He was prospecting for fossils with the rest of the team at Ileret near Koobi Fora. In those days, shifta bandits roamed far and wide in the northern reaches of Kenya so run-ins with small groups of armed men were not uncommon. With a friendly gift of some tea or tobacco, fresh water, and perhaps a meal, these meetings usually passed without live gunfire. But this time, as bullets ricocheted about, Ngeneo was doubly lucky. Not only did the bullets narrowly miss their mark, but beneath the bush, to his delight and great surprise, Ngeneo found a beautifully preserved complete hominin mandible! The bandits were soon completely forgotten in the excitement and subsequent controversy around KNM-ER 992. This fossil would end up being erroneously classified as a new species, and it would be almost three decades before we could sort out the ensuing tangle with another spectacular fossil find.

  The year 2000 at last brought me back to Ileret and the very sediments where Ngeneo had made his headlong dive under a bush. I had long planned to return to the east side of the lake, but with one thing or another, my fieldwork on the west side had taken more than a decade to complete. Every site we explored had proved to be so much more exciting and productive than we could have hoped for. But all the work I had done and the research by others in numerous related fields now seemed to be beckoning me inexorably to the 1.8-million-year mark.

  We knew from the geological record and climate science that by this time the accumulation of ice sheets over Antarctica had flung the world fully back into an ice epoch. The palaeontological record showed that the increased extremes in climate had in turn caused a huge turnover in the fauna as old dietary niches literally dried up and new species evolved to meet new opportunities. Emerging out of all this change was our direct ancestor—the spectacularly successful H. erectus. I was convinced that I could no longer delay, and I resolved to look more closely at this pivotal age in our prehistory in East Africa.

  Louise was also anxious to return to the east side of the lake. She was concerned about the increasing incursion of livestock in Sibiloi National Park and the desperate plight of young people at Ileret who had no prospects for employment. All this was contributing to threaten the fossils and the wildlife that the park had been established to protect. In the intervening years since we last scoured the East Turkana sediments, the squat, square, and orderly police post of Ileret, which used to comprise a few buildings arranged with military precision, had mushroomed into a sprawling town of thousands. Still leading a partially nomadic lifestyle, its inhabitants brought untold numbers of goats with them, and the formerly well-vegetated landscape once filled with abundant wildlife now more closely resembled the denuded west side.

  The Koobi Fora base camp, built up with such care by Richard so researchers could continue to work the rich deposits, had fallen into a state of terrible disrepair under the management of the National Museums of Kenya, with the museum staff often enduring many months without resupply of food and water—or even salaries—because they had neither spares nor fuel for their vehicles. Still, it was exciting to be back in this magical part of Kenya, and we soon had a basic operation outfitted and running again.

  We moved into the old sandstone banda that Richard and I had occupied in the 1970s, which still had our old furniture including a battered chest of drawers full of a very colourful collection of my vintage ’70s outfits. Now almost my exact same size, Louise spent an enjoyable afternoon trying these retro outfits on with much enjoyment and mirth before we discarded them to make room for new field clothes. Not long after this, we discovered that our new wardrobe had invaded the home of a small African rock python that had taken up long-term residence in the chest of drawers. Each morning, Louise and I would investigate whether the python was in Louise’s drawer or mine and wear each other’s clothes to avoid disturbing our handsome tenant!

  As usual, the highlight of that first season back on the east side came towards the very end. Fredrick Kyalo Manthi, who had sampled the microfauna at Kanapoi, arrived for a rushed thirteen-day visit stolen out of his time with his family in between semesters at the University of Cape Town where he was in his third year of undergraduate studies. Kyalo announced without preamble that he had come to find a hominin for me—and not just “any old hominin, but a very good one.” Perhaps I rather dampened his enthusiasm with my very sceptical rejoinder that he’d better hurry as he hadn’t much time! But precisely thirteen days into his visit, following the Nzube method, Kyalo waited until the very hottest part of the day just before lunch to tell me that he had something “rather interesting” to show Louise and me. “Rather interesting” is another way of saying, “I have a monkey to show you,” which usually means “I think I have a hominin, but I don’t want to be disappointed if it isn’t.” Enjoying the thrill of anticipation that is always heightened at moments such as these, we willingly accepted the detour and hastened after him across the oven-hot exposures.

  To this day, I have no idea how he spotted it. Not far from a scattering of scrappy bovid bones, Kyalo pointed to a very unprepossessing layer of cementlike rock in a rather flat area of land denuded of all but the toughest tussocks of camel grass by Ileret’s voracious goats. As I stared past Kyalo’s finger through the blinding glare, my eyes at last made out a slightly protruding bump in the rock that could have been anything. But all at once, the large distinctive circular earhole that can only mean a hominin skull leapt into focus. And right where it should have been, I noticed what looked like a thin brow ridge barely peeping out of the calcrete matrix that completely obscured everything else. Kyalo’s really good hominin was way beyond our wildest dreams—but we wouldn’t know that for some time because we couldn’t see how much more of the skull would be concealed in the rock.

  Kyalo went back to the car to retrieve some picks, hammers, chisels, and some water, and sent the rest of the crew back to camp for lunch. Louise ran back to collect the camera, and she managed to drive the car farther up the soft sand river so we wouldn’t have to carry the rock-encased skull such a long distance. Close to four hot and sweaty hours later, we had at last managed to extract a solid lump of rock encasing the skull. Kyalo led us triumphantly back to camp and on to Koobi Fora, where the rest of the crew excitedly awaited us with a celebratory meal of delicious fresh tilapia plucked out of the lake specially for the occasion and washed down with the rare treat of icy cold beer.

  Kyalo’s spectacular discovery was the beginning of a spate of really good luck. Hot on its heels, two Turkana members of our field crew, John Kaatho and Robert Moru, produced beautiful and important finds—an upper jaw that would prove immensely significant because it was not H. erectus and a stunningly well-preserved lower leg b
one (tibia). Four isolated teeth in various degrees of preservation rounded out the year’s haul of hominins.

  It took Christopher Kiarie almost a whole year to meticulously remove all the grains of sand firmly cemented onto the skull—with all of us periodically peering impatiently over his shoulder and through his microscope to watch the bone emerge at a glacial pace. He did an incredible job, and his reward was an exquisitely preserved skull. It was complete but for the face, and apart from one small broken area on the top of the skull, it was undistorted. How different from the sorry state of Flat Face when its battered skull first emerged from the rock! Best of all was the incredible degree of detail on the base that showed every orifice where blood vessels and nerves would have entered the brain. This fragile part of the braincase is usually the first to break off and be lost, so the rarity of this beautiful fossil made it even more special.

  While the skull certainly looked like H. erectus, two things about it immediately struck us as a bit odd. The first of these was its diminutive size and its slight delicate features. It did not have very pronounced brow ridges, which gave many people the first impression that it must have been a child. Louis’s OH 9, which he dismissed as too small-brained a creature to be anything worth bothering about, completely dwarfed Kyalo’s skull, which was less than two-thirds the size. Indeed, our new skull, KNM-ER 42700, later proved to be the smallest known H. erectus.

  The second thing we noticed was its uncanny resemblance to one of the skulls found in Dmanisi. The first of these Georgian discoveries was a mandible retrieved from the ruins of a medieval castle in 1991. That mandible had also drawn Alan Walker’s attention for its striking similarities to the Turkana Boy’s jaw when he was making his study of the skeleton at around the same time. Three more mandibles and four skulls followed the first jaw out of the Dmanisi excavation as well as a plethora of primitive stone tools and the remains of elephants, giraffes, gazelles, rhinos, sabre-toothed cats, bears, wolves, rodents, and ostriches.

  It was the second Dmanisi skull to be discovered, D2700, that had a very similar profile to Kyalo’s skull and shared its small size and gracile brow ridges. This skull, unlike ours, still had its teeth preserved as well as its lower jaw. This meant that its age could be determined quite precisely, which showed us that this individual was not yet fully grown because its wisdom teeth had not erupted. This immediately begged the question of Kyalo’s Ileret skull: was it small because it was young or was it just small? According to conventional wisdom, H. erectus beyond the shores of Africa was not supposed to resemble its African cousin, so why did these two skulls look so incredibly similar? I was intrigued and thrilled. But personal and professional setbacks were destined to interrupt our plans yet again.

  New hardships and new resentments had surfaced since Richard and I had worked these sediments some thirty field seasons previously, and our good relations with the community had long since been forgotten. Sibiloi National Park was in desperate trouble. This unique park was gazetted in 1976 to safeguard some of the richest prehistoric sites, and it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. Because of its locale, it contained animals found only in the northern part of Kenya: Grévy’s zebra, the reticulated giraffe, and the beisa oryx as well as a number of the large cats. In the 1970s, few local people used this area because the Dassenetch from the north have a long-standing enmity with the Gabbra who live to the east. When individuals from these two tribes meet, deadly battles follow, and bouts of cattle rustling are frequent. By everyone’s avoiding the area except when extreme drought reduced the grazing elsewhere, the people from the two areas rarely met, and a semitruce prevailed. The buffer zone of the park in turn protected the wildlife and the fossils.

  This situation inevitably changed with increased population numbers. Depending on their livestock for subsistence, Dassenetch from both Kenya and Ethiopia traditionally move south during the driest months to seek grazing for their livestock. However, by the year 2000, a large number of nomadic herdsmen had moved vast herds of livestock into Sibiloi National Park on a semipermanent basis. Armed to the teeth with semiautomatic rifles and great long belts of bullets, these herdsmen frequently shoot the wildlife, and many species are now seriously depleted or have vanished altogether. The fighting for access to water and grazing between the Dassenetch and the Gabbra is more and more frequent, and fatal conflicts are far too common. The Dassenetch understandably resent any efforts to protect the wildlife and the fossils in Sibiloi because the immediate benefits they derive from grazing their cattle in the park outweigh any value perceived in Nairobi about preserving a rich national heritage. The Dassenetch of this marginalised area, all but forgotten by Kenya’s central government, had for many years been almost entirely excluded from reaping the rewards from having a national park nearby. The area is so remote, serviced by such poor roads, and often rife with insecurity that few tourists reach the park. The collections of fossils and artefacts resulting from field expeditions were always packed up and transported back to Nairobi to the National Museum of Kenya following Kenyan government policy and requirements. The local communities had little involvement in the field research apart from the few individuals employed by us as temporary help and no knowledge of the significance and importance of their area revealed by this research.

  It was increasingly apparent that if there was to be any long-term future for the fossil sites and the wildlife, we had to have the cooperation of the local people. In order to achieve this, they would have to be made aware of the potential benefits these assets could generate. If we were unable to accomplish this, it would become all but impossible to continue field research in the area. There was a real risk that both the animals and the fossils might be irrevocably lost. And in 2003, we found ourselves completely thwarted by the resentments of a people who took out their grievances on the only outsiders there to hear them—us.

  As soon as we resumed our work on the east side of the lake in 2000, Louise immediately set about raising funds for the school and the local clinic, which at the time was a mere shell with neither clinical officer nor medicines. But the young people, who desperately wanted employment and cash, believed that we should be doing far more to help them. Our small expedition simply did not have the resources to satisfy the huge demand, and as a consequence of the pressure that the Ileret people exerted, it was all but impossible for us to work there. The animosity of some community members forced us to postpone our fieldwork in 2003, which gave us time to initiate additional community help—funds for a school extension and a reactivated clinic with regular medical supplies provided by AMREF and a full-time clinician with some training in basic clinical techniques. By 2004, with these measures in place, we felt that we would be able to safely work at Ileret again. But although we had the support of the local leaders, it quickly became clear that we were still unwelcome among the youth. We reluctantly moved back to Koobi Fora to work the sediments farther south. All the solutions involved the need to generate very large sums of money, which seemed to us impossible and were far outside the purview of palaeontological exploration and the shoestring research grants that we operated on. It was also increasingly difficult for Louise and me to be based at the Koobi Fora research camp because it was being used for tourists and field-school students organised through the National Museums of Kenya, and we were eventually forced to leave the camp Richard had built all those years before. This made the difficult logistics for vehicles, supplies, and accommodation for our field crew even more complicated.

  Added to these already formidable challenges, Richard’s health was again failing rapidly. The kidney that his brother Philip had donated a quarter of a century earlier, although having far surpassed all expectations of how long it might last, was finally packing up. Then, all of a sudden, it failed altogether in 2005 after a reaction to some drugs Richard had been given when he was in Stony Brook, New York. After receiving an honorary degree in 1998, he had struck up a warm friendship with the president of the university,
Shirley Strum Kenny, who shared his vision of furthering research in the earth sciences in Turkana and had offered him a professorship to develop ideas about how this could be achieved. Richard chaired a series of human evolution workshops and was in active discussions as to how Stony Brook University could partner with Kenyan institutions. But all of this was put on hold as we grappled with his new illness.

  Richard phoned me from Stony Brook as I was preparing for our fieldwork that year.

  “My kidney has failed,” he said without preamble. “The only way to stay alive will be a second transplant, and fast.”

  Shaken, but without hesitation, I offered to give him one of my kidneys and left immediately for New York. Upon my arrival in Stony Brook, I was poked and prodded and subjected to a battery of medical tests that measured every imaginable indicator of my health. In spite of being in my early sixties, I passed these, and the rather poor match between our tissue types was no longer such a problem because the antirejection medicines were greatly improved since 1980. The doctors established that I was a viable donor, and we were soon both on the operating table in early 2006. This time, the transplant was performed using a tiny incision and keyhole surgery. Nevertheless, the operation was excruciatingly painful, and I spared many a thought for Philip’s far more invasive procedure that resulted in a lengthy scar running from his spine all the way round to his belly button.

  Samira came to stay with us and played nursemaid to both of us. Although the massive advances in medical technology and transplant surgery over the twenty-five years since his first procedure certainly smoothed the way, Richard was again desperately ill, and his stubborn perseverance that makes him such a dreadful patient is also what helped him to survive the ordeal. Unbeknownst to us, amputees need special provisions during an operation like this because of fluid accumulation in the legs. Poor Richard swelled up like a balloon and was incapacitated for several weeks of avoidable suffering.